Русские здесь: Фильм, помогающий Андропову
- Автор: Глезер Александр, Бокштейн Борис
- Год: 1983
- Язык: русский
- Год: Третья волна
- Жанр: Публицистика
Электронная книга - «Русские здесь: Фильм, помогающий Андропову». Краткое содержание книги:
Мы призываем всех эмигрантов поддержать Антидиффамационную лигу, созданную по инициативе Владимира Буковского. Всю информацию об этой Лиге вы найдете на последней странице обложки.
Primitive rustics only
The emigres from post-1917 Russia have been providing a powerful cultural stimulus which we can clearly see in retrospect. If I were to choose the opening musical background for a documentary on the emigration from Russia, I would choose Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto (which he wrote in America), played by a recent Russian emigre to an American audience.
What did Ofra Bikel choose? A 1905 tune played on a village harmonica. Now, what do recent emigres from Russia, most of whom are urban Jews, have in common with village harmonicas playing 1905 tunes?
The 1905 tune on a village harmonica is followed by a 19th-century folk song which an emigre plays on the street on a kind of xylophone, reminiscent of American street-corner musicians. Jessica Savitch says to its tune: “... they (the “Russians”] have their own music ....”
Indeed, Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto would be absurd: the “Russians" composing or playing serious music! On the other hand, the “Russians" who have “their own” primitive street music reinforce the impression of an alien primitive Eastern tribe, with “their” music, in contrast to the music of Ofra Bikel’s Western and American sophisticated civilization.
Next comes a kind of singing and dancing clown who is “known to every Russian,” the announcer proclaims. No “Russian” of my emigre milieu has ever heard of him. But what the “documentary” purports to show is that just as all Americans know world-famous musicians or writers, ail “Russians” know their clown whom no outsider knows. The “Russians” live within their closed, self-contained tribe, alien, incomprehensible and unpleasant to outsiders.
Incidentally, this dance the clown dances is Jewish, which Ofra Bikel ought to know. But in her desire to represent Jews from Russia as aliens, savages and “Russians,” Ofra Bikel even shows an international Jewish dance as “Russian.”
Ofra Bikel stresses again and again that the “Russians” are primitive, rustic, corny. The “documentary” does not feature a single concert pianist or another serious musician, a single ballet dancer, a single scientist in any field, a single inventor or a single chessplayer. It does not show a single “Russian” doing any prestigious work or employed by a single university, a single government agency, a single hospital, a single engineering firm, or any other prestigious American institution.
Residing in the United States is a phalanx of fighters for freedom in Russia. The names of some of them are world-known. But none of them is as much as alluded to in the "documentary.”
Intense religious life, both Judaic and Russian Orthodox, exists in certain segments of immigration. It is not as much as hinted at.
The “documentary” does not show that the emigres — served by their own thriving emigre businesses, some of which are better than competitive American businesses — have brought life, order and prosperity to several areas which had been urban wastelands haunted by criminals.
The median income of emigres is, already, higher than the average for America as a whole, while the average scholastic rating of their children is far higher than America’s average. Is this surprising? No. After all, some of the most gifted, intelligent, enterprising inhabitants of Russia have been emigrating to America since 1917. They are far above the average in Russia and America. Ofra Bikel wants to see this elite as a bunch of primitive rustics, drunks, derelicts or social misfits — and this is what she shows.
Ofra Bikel’s “Russians” have the following “Russian” traits:
(1) Materialism. Though her “Russians” are paupers (not a single Russian is shown to own an expensive home, office, plant, laboratory or any other substantial property), they avidly try on mink coats, overeat, wallow in cheap vulgar “luxuries” and see X-rated movies dubbed in Russian.
(2) Rustic innocence. They don’t understand there are burglars, and the purpose of safety chains on doors has to be explained to them. In rustic Russia, evidently, no burglars exist.
(3) Inclination to crime. They are afraid of the police, forge documents and seek illegal ways in everything.
(4) Mental underdevelopment. They are primitive, speak atrocious English (all worse than even Ofra Bikel), cannot think or speak coherently on any subject, and when asked to explain how they understand freedom, they just mumble and stammer.
(5) Unfitness for freedom. In the West they are “frightened and lost.”
(6) Prudishness. “At 17 my daughter knows all there is to know about sex,” they complain.
(7) Aversion to enterprise. They are not fit for business:
“I like [business] risks as much as I like the KGB,” they groan. They are “not adventurous.”
(8) Aversion to independence. They cannot stand independence: “It is their dependence on the [Communist] Party that they now miss.”
(9) Primitive sentimentality. They are corny and maudlin, never intelligent or refined.
(10) Intolerance.
Ofra Bikel shows 10 types of “Russians”:
1. Emigre-hating emigres. Just as every social group has its own haters (i.e., there are anti-Semitic Jews), there are emigre-hating emigres. They explain daily how hateful all emigres are as a group except them, emigre-hating emigres. Those emigre-hating emigres were a godsend for Ofra Bikel.
2. Russian-language journalists who explain that in Russia they knew “what to think” and “that was very comfortable,” and here “no one tells me what to think," and "it’s ... not very comfortable.”
3. Comic businessmen trying to do some business for the Russians. Two examples are given: a garrulous young woman who is a one-woman tourist agency showing New York to the "Russians” and saying first by mistake "Washington Bridge” instead of "Manhattan Bridge,” and then "Manhattan Beach.” The other is a kind of broker who is now allegedly being sought by the police.
Both comical "businessmen” cater to "Russians.” No "Russian” businessmen catering to Americans or constituting part of American business can even be imagined, according to Ofra Bikel. She considers as non-existent the thousands of "Russian” businesses which are now American businesses, often giving jobs to Americans and serving Americans.
4. Unemployed engineers (or medical nurses). I know many former Soviet engineers who have turned down lucrative engineering jobs because they have gone into business, and one of them is a science editor at Radio Liberty. Ofra Bikel dug up an unemployed engineer and a medical nurse, neither of whom is shown on the screen, but their woeful tales of unemployment are spun at length by relatives.
5. “Intellectual people,” who are represented by someone who says he was a “boss” in Russia and who is not one here.
6. Vulgarians who recite atrocious poetry by radio.
7. Nostalgic maniacs who spend their lives watching “old Russian movies” [that is, old corny Soviet movies] "over and over.”
8. Philosophers on welfare who complain of “the emotional coldness of Americans.”
9. Writers on welfare who miss the KGB.
10. Poets who guzzle vodka even when lying down in bed.
It is the last two types who are worth special attention, to show how Ofra Bikel turned specific individuals into the puppets of her propaganda puppet show.
Missing the KGB